WOOSTER, Ohio — Learn how to graft new plants for your garden, including new fruit trees for the coming spring, in workshops Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 in Secrest Arboretum from 8 a.m. to noon.
Instructor Paul Snyder, who’s a program assistant with the arboretum, said participants will get hands-on practice with side veneer grafting, will also learn the basics of cleft and whip-and-tongue grafting and can take home the plants they create.
The workshops are the same on both days.
Grafting lets you combine the best parts of two plants into one. For example, you could cut a stem from an apple tree that has especially tasty fruit, graft it onto the rootstock of a cold-hardy apple variety, and produce a new apple tree blessed with both of those features.
Provided
The workshops will provide the plant materials for grafting. The lower grafted parts — called the rootstocks or understocks — will be from apple, white pine, ginkgo, Norway spruce and balsam fir.
The upper parts, or scions, haven’t been chosen yet. Participants also can bring their own scions.
Cost
The cost for either workshop is $35 for members of the Friends of Secrest Arboretum and $45 for nonmembers.
Details and links to online registration are at go.osu.edu/Jan19Grafting and go.osu.edu/Feb2Grafting.
Call 330-263-3761 for more information. The arboretum is at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, 1680 Madison Avenue in Wooster. Both workshops will be in the arboretum’s headquarters building at 2320 Selby Road on the OARDC campus.
